Apple News & Updates : Two Guys And A Podcast

from June 2014, OS X

Some things in life are just inevitable. If you eat one potato chip when the entire bag is available, it is inevitable that you will eat more; if you drink often in bars and pubs and then drive home, it is inevitable you will someday get a DUI. If you are in Vegas and on a lucky streak, if you keep betting it is inevitable that the casino will win all its money back and then some.

The MacBook Air has been available since Macworld 2008. At the time of the original announcement, Steve Jobs was particularly proud of Apple’s partnership with Intel, which delivered a powerful and yet very efficient custom Core Duo processor. The announcement was such a big deal that Jobs had Intel’s CEO (at the time), Paul Otellini, take center stage to give a brief speech. Moreover, this was Apple’s first Mac OS X product that did not use a traditional hard drive but a solid state drive (SSD) instead. While the price:performance ratio wasn’t as impressive, Apple did what it always does — deliver value. Apple continued to push the envelop of technology and design through the MacBook Air, and over time, extended their lead over the competition, in what is now known as the ultrabook market.

One of the best features in OS X Mavericks is Apple’s major improvement to multiple display management. A key complaint Mavericks addressed was to display the Finder menu bar at the top of each display. So whether one is working on their main display or a secondary one, the menu bar is readily available on the same display without having to always go to the main one to select a menu item.

Using Spaces (aka Mission Control) is improved in Mavericks as well. Rather than both displays being paired together into a “single desktop”, in Mavericks the main display can have its own set of desktops independent from the secondary display’s set of desktops. This make switching between multiple desktops extremely flexible (and powerful) for almost any work mode. And then there is the Dock...

Not much has been said about the Dock in OS X Yosemite. Tim and Craig briefly touched on the flatter interface and how the windows are more translucent — adapting to the “temperature” of the surrounding environment (via the desktop background picture). But there are other refinements within the Dock that didn’t make it in OS X Mavericks that will be part of OS X Yosemite:

In yesterday’s Keynote Craig Federighi, aka Hair Force One, gave us a preview of OS X Yosemite. One feature he spent a few moments on was Spotlight. Spotlight is Apple’s internal search engine to help you find apps, files, contacts, etc. on your Mac. However, that will change in a significant way with OS X Yosemite.

OS X Mail is as old as is OS X — as Mail was one of the core apps with the original OS X 10.0 release. Since then Mail has gone through many updates as has OS X. While the Keynote at WWDC 14 introduced the predictable bug fixes and enhancements to Mail syncing and application speed, there were three absolutely huge new productivity tools added to Mail in OS X Yosemite.

Mail Drop

Mail Drop is an incredible idea, and once you use it you’ll wonder why someone didn’t think of this before. Mail Drop solves the problem of sending large attachments through email. As we all know, the experience is iffy at best when emailing someone a large attachment. Sometimes the email goes through, sometimes it doesn’t — for a myriad of reasons.